Rain-Makers Still Try to End Drought

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 487, 17 October 1928, Page 16

Rain-Makers Still Try to End Drought

Native Ceremonies and Superstitions ’•ROASTED BUFFALOES” Superstitions relative to rainfall appear still to exist in remote parts of the world, says the “New York Times.’’ A recent story from South Africa relates that natives, following tribal law, put to death two pair of twins In order to bring rain during a prolonged drought. The dramatic tale which comes front the province of Buluwayo places the guilt not on the parents, but specifically on the mother-in-law of one of them and generally on the other grandparents of the children. The accused, so runs the record, pleaded that they were unaware that they had committed a criminal act. They “were merely acting according to their law.”

Since the beginning of time prayers for rain have been chanted by primitive peoples. The North American Indian used to paint himself in vivid colours and stamp out his religious dances in a ceremony believed to be effective In times of drought. According to the American Museum of Natural History, the ceremony still persists among tribes in the southwestern part of the country. At Santo Domingo the gods of rain are appealed to in a festival staged annually on August 4. This festival lasts for several days, and Is a season of dancing and of religious tribal rites performed by native Indians in ceremonial robes. Not only in South Africa and among the Indians of the Western Hemisphere are rain prayers and mystic rites still in vogue, but in most parts of India and among the Pacific islands as well. All through the history of tribes appear long and detailed accounts of sacrifices offered to rain gods. From the testimony of native chroniclers certain ceremonies handed down through generations have been found most effective in bringing rain. These chroniclers point to copious rainfalls of past years to substantiate belief In native cus-i toms. While drought to-day turns the eyes of modern man toward dynamite and balloons, it turned the eyes of primitive man toward the buffalo and the cow. These animals in old days were roasted and offered with great pomp to deities and to their earthly agents, the priests. Hindu records set forth that an “appeal to the clouds” was always accompanied by singing and dancing. It is claimed by ethnologists who have studied rain charms and rain gods in many countries that the ceremonies attendant on the rain festival are both beautiful and sacred; that there is little evidence to substantiate happenings similar to the one reported recently from South Africa. Rainfall ceremonies, assert these scientists, still survive among such enlightened nationals as modern Europeans, Hindus, Mahommedans and the Chinese.

The Book of Common Prayer, used by all clergymen of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, recites in its prayer for rain, “Send us, we beseech Thee, in this our necessity, such moderate rains and showers, that we may receive the fruits of the earth to our comfort and to Thy honour.”